


Where Is She?

by Zombie_ReiKitti



Series: Strange Friends [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminal Minds Setting, BAU Team - Freeform, Gen, Investigations, frustratingly little to go on, mentions of Haley, mentions of the Listener, skyrim character in criminal minds universe, trying to find the Listener
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zombie_ReiKitti/pseuds/Zombie_ReiKitti
Summary: The BAU team tries to find the unknown woman who had helped Jack but the leads are few and far between.





	Where Is She?

**Author's Note:**

> I strongly suggest reading "Friends in Weird Places" before reading this.

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            "This is it? There's nothing more?" Morgan asked, examining the small note in his hands.

            "It's the only thing out of place," Aaron replied staring at the note. It was small and white- just a sticky note really. The small inked-in hand at the bottom of the note stared up at them as though it was mocking them. "There's nothing missing, either."

            "You gotta admit this is pretty odd," Morgan continued, flipping the note over to see if anything was written on the backside. But it was just plain white paper. "This _friend_ picks up Jack, travels across the state with him, stays at crappy hotels, and then what? Just drops Jack off and leaves a note? What type of sick person are we dealing with here?"

            "It could be just someone being nice for once," Reid piped up from his seat on the office couch.

            "Yeah, and how many people do we know just do things because they're nice?" Morgan retorted. "Besides Baby Girl."

            Reid opened his mouth and then shut it.

            "Not that many in our line of work. Sorry Reid," Rossi mumbled from his spot in the doorway to the office. "Plus this person most likely killed our UNSUB before picking up Jack. You can't say any nice person would do that."

            Reid huffed and slumped back into the couch.

            Aaron leaned against his desk and took the note from Morgan. "Right. What I want to know is how this person just walked in and left Jack with no one the wiser. Morgan and Reid, go talk to the front guards, see if any of them remember someone walking in with Jack. David, go ask around the bullpen, see if anyone remembers seeing something. I'm going to go see if Garcia can catch this person on the security footage," he ordered. His team all nodded and left the office. Aaron took a moment to center himself (remembering his son was _safe_ ) before he left and headed towards Garcia's office.

 

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            "Please tell me you have something," Aaron demanded once he walked through the door leading into Garcia's office.

            "You betcha I do, sir!" Garcia chirped, swiveling in her chair to face him before swiveling back around to face her computers. "At 6:54 pm, we see a woman carrying a child walk into the Bureau." She pauses the security footage to point out the woman, before resuming the footage. She definitely looked about the same height as Haley was.

            "And how long did it take her to get through security?" Aaron asked, watching as the woman was stopped and asked a few questions by the guards.

            "Only a few minutes. See?" Garcia paused the footage when the guards handed her a 'Visitor's Pass' to mark the time. Only five minutes had passed.

            "Which guards were on duty?"

            "Guards Savannahs and Jones, sir. You can see Guard Savannahs leading the way to the elevators here." Garcia resumed the footage to show the guard was indeed leading the way to the elevators while presumably carrying on a conversation with the unknown woman. They continued watching the security footage until the elevators' doors had closed.

            "Was it just me, sir, or did the woman look surprised for a moment there?" Garcia asked, rewinding the footage to the point where the unknown woman did indeed look a bit surprised at something.

            Aaron hummed his acknowledgement. This was getting more and more interesting. "Maybe Morgan and Reid can tell us more on that front."

            Garcia nodded, her fingers typing on the keyboard to bring up the security footage from the BAU bullpen. "Ready, sir?"

            "Yes," he said while watching the footage start playing.

            They watched as the woman left the elevators, stood in front of the bullpen's doors for a few seconds before walking through them into the bullpen where she stopped and looked around. It was a full minute later that had the woman walking towards the offices lining the bullpen in an unhurried gait. If Aaron didn't know better, he would have thought she knew exactly where she was going ahead of time. But there was a small hesitance to her gait that told him she actually was nervous. Finally she came across his office and pushed open the door. No one had thought of putting any cameras in the offices themselves, and now Aaron was ruing that decision. What happened while the woman was in there? Did she do anything besides laying Jack down on the couch and writing a note? Did she do anything to Jack? Aaron had no way of knowing for certain. Finally only five minutes later, the woman walked back into the bullpen and gently closed the door behind her- almost as though she didn't want to wake anyone up. Then she walked back across the bullpen to the elevators and hit the 'down' button. She calmly walked into the elevator and disappeared from sight.

            Garcia hit a few more buttons and suddenly they were viewing the elevator security footage. The woman nodded at a few people getting on or off the elevator, but she never moved from her spot until the elevator arrived at the lobby floor where she walked off the elevator. Garcia hit a few different buttons and they were watching through the lobby cameras that the woman walked past the guards, saying something and waving, then walking out the front doors and turning to the left. Garcia hit a few more buttons and they were watching the woman walk down the sidewalk for a few blocks before she disappeared around a large van. Garcia hit a few different buttons to view that corner from a different angle but it was to no avail- the woman had just vanished.

            "I don't understand. Where did she go? Where's her car? There's no parking on that street, there's no way she could've driven off!" Garcia was typing madly, trying to find an angle where they could watch the woman and see where she went. But no cameras picked her up again.

            "Is it possible to avoid the cameras?" Aaron asked after watching Garcia for a few minutes.

            "Well, I guess it's possible. But it'd be really difficult to do, especially at the intersections. I'd say it's more possible that she went into one of the department stores nearby and stayed in there for awhile before heading back out again. I'll scour the security footages until I find her again, sir." Garcia went back to typing and several security footages from several cameras popped up onto the computer screens.

            "When you find something, let me know?" Aaron asked, looking at his phone to call the team back together and going over what they'd all found.

            Garcia nodded, and Aaron left her office.

 

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            "Oh, yes! I remember now! There was a woman who came in the other week. She had her child in her arms and we didn't want to disturb the child too much, 'cause them crying is really the last thing we want to do, and he looked like he was going to fall asleep at any moment, so we let them both go through the metal detectors," Guard Jones went on saying, hardly taking a breath, "We know that's not really protocol, but it was too precious to meddle with!"

            Guard Savannahs elbowed her partner in the ribs. "You're not supposed to say that, idiot!" She hissed. She turned towards the BAU agents and sighed. "Look, I know we're not supposed to do that 'cause of protocol, but the kid looked half-asleep and we didn't want to have a screaming kid meeting his dad at work. Can we just overlook that?"

            Morgan glared at the guards. "No. What if it was a kidnapping?"

            Guard Jones opened his mouth to retort, but wilted at the hard stare he was receiving from Reid.

            "We're sorry. We won't do something like this again," both guards said, slumping ashamedly.

            "You bet you won't," Morgan growled. "Now tell me why you let an unknown woman into the Bureau."

            "But she wasn't unknown! She had Agent Hotchner's kid with her. We figured Agent Hotchner found a new wife and she wanted to surprise him at work. She was real friendly, too- didn't mind Savannahs rambling at her at all," Guard Jones replied. Guard Savannahs elbowed him in the ribs again, hissing something about being rude.

            "What made you think she was Aaron Hotchner's wife?" Reid asked.

            Both guards just looked at him. "Well, I mean, no one just calms down someone else's kid like she did or carries someone else's kid or lets someone else's kid fall asleep on them. She was patient with him, it seemed like. And the kid seemed to like her, too. He didn't say much, but I figured that was just cause he was so tired," Guard Jones answered.

            "And she didn't deny it when we called her Mrs. Hotchner. She looked surprised but she didn't deny it. Most folks would've corrected us if we were wrong about that, but she didn't. And the kid, Jack, snuggled into her as though she was his mom," Guard Savannahs added.

            Morgan and Reid looked at each other. "Anything else? Anything odd about her?" Morgan asked.

            "Well, no." Guard Savannahs hummed. "She didn't stay long, though. Maybe five- ten minutes tops. She said she was late for work when she left. Didn't see her get into any cars so I guess she works at one of the department stores down the road."

            "Thought it was pretty strange for her to not ask anyone here to watch Hotchner's kid while she went to work, but then again she probably just asked that techie girl to keep an eye on him." Guard Jones added thoughtfully. "I think that's about it." The guards looked at each other then shrugged. It seemed that was all Morgan and Reid were going to get out of them.

            Morgan and Reid both nodded their thanks at the guards and started to head their way back up to the bullpen.

 

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            Rossi ran his hand over his face. He'd asked just about everyone in the bullpen if they'd seen anyone with a child walking into the bullpen recently, but all anyone said was that JJ was seen walking with her kid when her husband had surprised her with a visit. No one else was seen. Rossi really hoped the rest of the team had something to report, because if this was it, they were doomed at ever finding out what happened.

 

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            Aaron waited until everyone had arrived in the conference room before beginning the debrief. "Who wants to start?"

            Rossi leaned forward. "I guess I might as well. No one up here in the bullpen saw anything amiss. The only person with a child that anyone remembers was JJ when her family came by for a surprise visit."

            The team waited for more information but Rossi just leaned back into his chair and sighed.

            "Wow. That's... That's nothing to go on," Morgan stated, sending Rossi a blank stare.

            "I _know_ ," Rossi groused. " _I'm_ just hoping the rest of you have something so we're not stuck where we started."

            The team all stared at each other. This was not a good beginning to the case.

            "The guards who were on duty that day said they let in the unknown woman because they thought she was the new Mrs. Hotchner," Morgan revealed with a small cringe. He didn't think anyone would blame Hotch if he got a bit miffed at the guards for assuming something so soon after losing Haley.

            "What." Was Aaron's dumbfounded reply. The team was quiet for a few minutes. "Why would they assume that?"

            "They thought Jack was too comfortable in her arms to be a stranger. Although they did mention that Jack was really quiet when they were passing through the lobby," Reid mentioned quietly.

            Aaron groaned into his hands. They'd need to have a chat with the front guards soon about who to let in and who not to let in. Aaron was not looking forward to it. "Anything else?"

            "Just that when she left, she said something about being late for work," Morgan responded. Aaron hummed in response. This case wasn't making all that much sense, even now.

            "Garcia and I watched the security footage. So far we have learned that this woman is about the same height as Haley- so about five-foot-four, she can assume a personality that benefits her, confidently walk into and out of the Bureau with no one realizing she doesn't belong, and she can disappear from all security footage. Garcia is looking into the different camera angles to try to find her again, but so far, the woman disappeared about three blocks away from here. Either she works in one of the department stores or she used one to get into the alley behind the stores." Aaron summarized to the team.

            "So basically, we have nothing," Rossi grouched. "The lab called while I was waiting for everyone, and the fingerprints off the note came back: no match in the database."

            "Seriously?" Morgan groaned while leaning back in his own chair. "How the hell are we supposed to find this woman?!"

            "We need to look into the department stores down the road. Maybe someone saw her. Morgan and Reid, take the stores across the road. David and I will take the ones on this side of the road. Hopefully someone knows something. She can't have just disappeared. Move out." Aaron ordered. He had a gut feeling that this case wasn't going to go the way he wanted it to.

 

 


End file.
